When an abnormality occurs in a system that executes operational processing, data in a memory at the time of the occurrence of the abnormality is stored in another storage medium, such as a hard disk, or the like in order to identify the cause of the abnormality. This processing is called a memory dump. While the memory dump is being executed, it is not allowed to use a memory from which a memory dump is taken, and thus system down occurs, or processing performance of operational processing is deteriorated.
In order to reduce the influence on operational processing when a memory dump is taken, the following technique is provided. Specifically, when an abnormality occurs in a specific partition in a system, the partition in which the abnormality has occurred is shut down. And a cell included in the partition is replaced by a preliminary cell, and the partition in which the abnormality has occurred is restarted. Here, the “cell” is a system board, for example. On the other hand, a memory dump is performed on the cell removed from the partition in which the abnormality has occurred, and data (hereinafter referred to as dump data) obtained by the memory dump is stored into a disk. In this manner, it becomes possible to perform a memory dump while shortening down time of the system.
However, in the above-described related-art technique, it is assumed that an abnormality occurs in a partition including only one system board, and it is not assumed that an abnormality occurs in a partition including a plurality of system boards. Accordingly, if the related-art technique is applied to a partition including a plurality of system boards, it becomes difficult to store only a part of data of a memory area in use, and to analyze the cause of the abnormality. As a relevant related-art document, Japanese Patent No. 4645837 has been known.